


Five Lessons

by 23Murasaki



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Headcanons Everywhere, I want to live in Grand Chokmah, Jade and Peony are there too, Post-Game, Tales of Secret Santa 2016, everyone in this game is traumatized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9011767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki
Summary: Tales of Secret Santa gift for @LordofRappigs on tumblr! Five lessons Guy learned in Grand Chokmah, between the end of Abyss and the epilogue. Featuring rappigs, Guy's unhealthy coping mechanisms, and more parentheses and hyphens than you can shake a red pen at.





	

The first thing that Guy learns about Grand Chokmah is that it’s an absolute mess. It’s a mess even disregarding the apocalypse-that-almost-wasn’t, as Peony cheerfully calls is, and with the addition of hundreds of replicas and refugees and travelers it is something akin to madness itself. Jade calmly drifts through it, and the sea of bodies parts before Peony and his retinue, but no one gets out of the way for the Emperor’s rapping walker. 

(Well, the rappigs scatter at the sight of him, true, but he sort of thinks that’s more out of antagonism than they’re brattier than– he doesn’t want to think about Luke, but they’re brattier than Luke used to be. Maybe Peony keeps them because he doesn’t have children.)

—————

The second thing Guy really learns about Grand Chokmah is that it’s literally crawling with military personnel. Jade passes through the crowds so easily because a solid quarter of the people on any given street answer directly to him. No one outside the military wants to cross the Necromancer either. 

(Guy managed to clip Jade-the-rappig and Saphir-the-rappig to the back of Jade-Jade’s belt once, and the three of them marched almost all the way to an ethics committee meeting before anyone noticed.)

The soldiers more or less ignore Guy, though one or another occasionally shoots him an encouraging smile. They seem to pity him, more than anything, given that each time they see him he’s being pulled in multiple different directions by Peony’s precious pets. 

(He tells himself that it’s the rappigs’ fault, and not that he looks like he hasn’t slept since Eldrant, since the apocalypse-that-almost-wasn’t. No one calls his bluff, even when he swears his eyes are red from allergies-that-aren’t rather than crying his eyes out in his room at night.)

—————

The third thing Guy learns about Grand Chokmah is that there are dozens of places to hide. Some of them are rappig-sized, true, and he has to remove Jade-the-rappig and several of his buddies from nearly all of them, but some are people-sized. Jade’s soldiers take breaks in them, and Jade himself occasionally lurks in the darker ones.

(Jade’s red eyes seem to glow in the dark, and it’s enough to give Guy the creeps even though they know each other well. It definitely spooks the soldiers, and it spooks all the rappigs except the Saphir. Saphir has no self preservation instinct and charges full tilt at Jade’s knees every time.)

Guy picks himself one with a view of the gardens, one that he can fit himself and all of his charges in, and hides there for hours. For some reason, none of the rappigs try to run away from there. He’s not going to complain, as long as they stay put. 

(Gelda-the-rappig likes to perch in high places and watch whatever Guy’s watching. Luke-the-rappig snuggles against Guy’s legs and naps there. He’s sweeter than– he doesn’t want to think about Luke– he’s sweeter than Luke used to be.)

He’s hiding there when he sees the soldiers leading Dist across the gardens in chains. He’s so bedraggled that he barely looks like himself, but starts yelling at Jade as soon as they clap eyes on each other. Points for tenacity, Guy thinks, and almost laughs, even though it’s really not that funny.

(Dist may be as immortal as a cockroach, but he’s alive. He died on Eldrant and he’s alive, and Guy’s heart is lighter than it has been in a very long time. He doesn’t want to think about Luke, but he sweeps Luke-the-rappig into his arms and plants a kiss between his long ears.)

—————

The fourth thing Guy learns about Grand Chokmah is something he used to know and has to relearn. Time passes differently when you have a set routine– the days blur and hours flow and somehow it’s easier to breathe and not to think that way. In Baticul, at the beginning, he had learned that, but he had forgotten it somewhere along the way, somewhere when he had stopped living in scheduled chunks.

(He had forgotten that once entire days could be and were devoted to minding Luke, doing whatever Luke wanted or handling whatever Luke needed. He’s doing his best not to think about Luke, not to think about him being dead, not to think about him maybe by some mad chance being alive.)

Presumably Peony’s routine changes, and Jade occasionally vanishes for days on end, but Guy lets himself be pulled along the same set path each day. The rappigs are, to a one, pleased by this, because they’re sweet but fairly simple creatures and they like to be fed at exactly the same time every day. 

(Maybe that was why people were so at ease with the Score– the rappigs live by something similar, though in their case the higher power dictating their lives can occasionally be bullied into going along with them.)

One year passes painfully. The second one passes like water. There’s a Hodian idiom that Guy can’t remember to do with that sort of thing. At least he no longer feels like he’s drowning. The soldiers in the street greet him by name, and their smiles have turned from pitying to friendly.

(He no longer feels like he’s drowning, and his loss and mourning are no longer etched onto his face. He can almost fake happiness again, almost.)

The third year passes almost before Guy can recognize its presence. Tear’s letter feels like an intrusion, a discordant note in the rhythm he has created for himself, and he almost takes the whole set of rappigs to Tattaroo Valley with him because he can’t think of anything else to do with them. Jade has to hand them off to someone else personally.

(Jade also has to manhandle Luke onto and off of the landship because no one else seems to know what to do, but it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. Luke’s alive, and that’s the only important part.)

—————

It’s Grand Chokmah where Guy learns to really believe in the impossible, after that. That’s the fifth thing he learns in that city, though he doesn’t see it as such. 

(What remains of Guy’s game face shatters, not in Tattaroo Valley, but in his hiding place with the view of the garden, where he curls up with Luke-the-rappig in his arms and sobs like a lost child. It’s something like a twenty years’ worth of unshed tears.)

Jade, or maybe Peony, or maybe both, trap everyone in Grand Chokmah for two weeks, and somehow the city is transformed by it. Everything seems surreal, but nothing more so than seeing Luke-the-person playing with Luke-the-rappig. They get along swimmingly, at least. Guy’s probably gawking, because Luke looks over at him and laughs so hard he has to sit down. 

(That’s not entirely true. It’s even more surreal when Asch turns up, seemingly out of nowhere, without even a hint of explanation. Luke’s happy to see him. Natalia’s happy to see him. Jade lurks with an adamant sort of silence. Guy decides to pretend that there is nothing strange in that at all. )

The fourth year since the apocalypse-that-almost-wasn’t doesn’t flow like water, not with unscheduled last minute trips back and forth between Kimlasca and Malkuth, not with the replica education program, not with Luke, but that’s alright. 

(You’re supposed to remember every day, right? Guy doesn’t have anyone he can pose that question to, but the rappigs seem to agree with him. When they’re deprived of their routine, they wander so much he swears that they’re lost again but then they all come back. When he tells Peony, the emperor laughs and says they always do that, given enough time. It’s an odd thought.)

Guy makes it literally to the Kimlascan border once before he realizes Jade-the-rappig is tagging along with him, and by that point he’s running so late he just takes the little creature with him. He tells an assembly of Kimlascan nobles that the rappig is there on behalf of Emperor Peony, and no one questions a thing.

(One relatively calm rappig is not the strangest thing that assembly of nobles has had to deal with in recent times. One sleepy rappig is not the strangest thing Guy has had to deal with in recent times. Jade-the-rappig serves, quite unexpectedly, as a small bit of common ground.)

When Peony finds out, because of course Peony finds out, he tries to formally make his rappigs Malkuth’s goodwill ambassadors. Jade intervenes and prevents that particular bit of nonsense, but has no qualms sending one or two with each delegation. He jokes to Guy that he’s packing the diplomats some lunch, but when they lose Nephry-the-rappig on the streets of Daath he’s at the head of the panicking search party.

(The sight of twenty-four very important people running around in circles trying to find a lost pet feels normal, in the sense that it feels like the loss of an apocalyptic perspective. Luke finds her, in the end, and Guy finds himself laughing on the street as though the apocalypse-that-almost-wasn’t was just a footnote somewhere in a dusty book.)


End file.
